Theater costs money. That one little fact affects everything you experience when you go to a play: the quality of the actors, the set and costumes, the sound and light design, even the printed program.
Often the most telling clue to a theater's artistic potential is, like it or not, its budget. You just can't hire an experienced union performer when you don't have the funds to pay his or her weekly salary, just as you can't build a beautiful beach house set when you don't have the cash for lumber and sliding glass doors. Ever wondered why a theater is performing Shakespeare in modern street clothes, or why you've seen so many one- and two-character plays? Money, nothing but money.
It's the reason Willy Loman's sofa doesn't match the rug or the easy chair. It's the reason Julius Caesar's toga looks like a sheet from Blanche DuBois's cot.
I checked in with three of the Bay area's artistic directors — Anna Brennen of Stageworks, David Jenkins of Jobsite Theater, and Joe Winskye of Hat Trick Productions — and asked them to talk money with me.
I started with Brennen, whose theater is the best-funded of the three, with a yearly budget of more than $350,000 that covers mainstage productions along with outreach to schools and colleges, senior citizens, prisons and museums. Brennen makes a modest $20,500 a year as producing artistic director, and the few other Stageworks employees work either halftime or project-by-project. Brennen said that she spends 80 percent of her time fundraising or helping someone else raise funds.
"The truth about theater, as a wonderful man, George Abbott, once said, is it's a hands-on operation, it's made with hands, and as such, it is extremely costly," she noted. She added that a typical Stageworks show costs about $20,000 to mount, and that ticket sales never pay more than 65 percent of production costs — and sometimes as little as 45 percent. The remainder comes from grants and donations.
As for the hiring of actors, union rules require that for each Equity (union) actor, her theater has to put up a $2,000 bond — "for four actors, you're at $8,000, which with a $15,000-$20,000 budget is scary."
The upshot: Stageworks mostly works with non-union actors, although Brennen said "it is not my preference." She said that artistic personnel — actors, stage managers, designers, directors — cost about half a show's budget, though sets and set-building can be costly also.
I asked her what recent artistic decision was also a budgetary one? "All of them," she answered. "We are totally constrained by budget … I mean, the most painful thing — it makes me cry — to do is to have to talk to a person about what I can pay them … I loathe the fact that this civilization and this culture and this society does not respect their artists … and I cannot pay my artists well. It's shameful, is it not?"
What Jobsite's Jenkins first mentioned when I asked him about budget was the price of rights to a particular script. "Fifteen hundred dollars is about average," he said. "Some shows are much more expensive … For instance, [Edward Albee's] The Goat: we paid almost four grand up front, just for the rights to be able to do it." Finance plays a part in every decision, he said, from whether Jobsite can hire an Equity actor to "whether or not we have to go to the thrift store to buy all the clothes or whether we can have someone build them from scratch."
Jobsite only used two Equity actors last year, at a salary of about $425 a week for each, compared with the $130 or so a week paid to non-union thespians. Jobsite's budget during the same time was about $117,000, and $105,000 of it came from ticket sales, Jenkins said. Like Stageworks, Jobsite is a nonprofit theater, a choice that entices donors because "they're outright making a contribution to a charity, effectively," Jenkins said, "and they're able to claim that as a charitable donation on their taxes." The budget per show, Jenkins said, is usually in the $15,000-$23,000 range, and artists are paid on a "sliding scale" — a certain minimum is promised, and there's more if the show is a financial success.
Fundraising, Jenkins said, is "pretty darn important." He probably spends an hour or two a day, and more on weekends, trying to "locate" money. When some aspect of a production turns out more expensive than anticipated — as did the costume budget for the recent Gorey Stories — the cash often is subtracted from some artist's paycheck. For instance, if Gorey Stories hadn't done so well at the box office, the extra cash for the costumes would have come right out of Jenkins' salary. Once again this year he made not a penny as Jobsite's artistic leader, which he hopes will change in the next half-decade.
Finally, Hat Trick Theatre, also a nonprofit, is the baby of the three, producing its plays at the tiny Silver Meteor Gallery, and often offering the most rudimentary of design elements. Finance, said artistic director Joe Winskye, "is still a large concern … but probably not as big as … some of the larger companies in the area."
Hat Trick's budget this year is about $24,000, 80 percent of which comes from ticket sales, with the other 20 percent coming from donations and "members of the company chipping in, to make things happen." Outlay per play is about $4,000, and actors are paid on a "profit share" basis: "If the show does well, then they get a percent of the profits, but if the show does not do well financially, they are prepared to work for free," Winskye said. "This does limit sometimes people who are interested in working with us, but we've found a good number of artists in the area who love the craft enough to do stuff without the promise of money."
Winskye added that the company pays a small rent for use of the Silver Meteor, but he declined to name the sum: "I will say that [owner] Mike Murphy is very, very kind to us, and he's probably taking a loss on what he charges us." As for fundraising, Winskye said he spends about 10 to 15 hours a week at it.
So that's how it is: constant concern about cash. And no one among the smaller companies is getting rich.
Which makes me think of one word to describe all these underpaid artists: nobility.
And another to describe our appropriate response: gratitude.
This article appears in Dec 19-25, 2007.
